1. Field
Embodiments of the present disclosure relate to a system and method for standardized monitoring of one or more operating conditions of computer servers and network appliances.
2. Background Art
Various types of sensors are provided for monitoring of environmental and operating conditions for computer servers and network appliances, such as enclosure intrusion, temperature, vibration, and airflow, for example. The number, type, and position of the sensors are often specified during design of the server and/or one or more circuit boards, each of which may include one or more processors, memory, related chipsets, and electronic components, for example. Each sensor must communicate information relating to a sensed or measured parameter to a controller or processor to determine whether the system is operating as expected and/or to provide information to a local or remotely situated device administrator. Sensors may include, but are not limited to, thermal, humidity, vibration, altitude, acoustic noise, airflow, and electrical parameter sensors. One or more sensors mounted on a motherboard may provide information relative to operating characteristics within a particular area or zone of the motherboard. For example, the operating temperature(s) may be used to control system operation, such as adjusting airflow or processor speed, to provide a status or warning message relative to operating temperature, or to shutdown the system to protect components from damage due to overheating, for example.
Various standard protocols, such as I2C (or I2C) and SMBus, for example, may be used to communicate control, diagnostic, and power management data between integrated circuit chips, which may include a microcontroller or microprocessor. The I2C and SMBus protocols are popular 2-wire buses (plus a ground connection) that include many similarities and are generally compatible with respect to devices designated as slave or master devices. As one example of operating characteristics, the I2C protocol developed by Phillips Semiconductors provides for serial communication of data between I2C integrated circuit devices using two conductors to implement an I2C bus. A serial data line and a serial clock line are provided with each device connected to the bus being addressable by a unique address. Similar to other protocols, the I2C protocol provides various multi-master bus features, such as collision detection and arbitration, to prevent data corruption when more than one master simultaneously initiates a data transfer.
Computer servers and network appliances may include multiple sensors on a single circuit board, and multiple circuit boards in a particular enclosure, rack, or other arrangement. Because the 2-wire serial bus protocols, and similar protocols, provide relatively low bandwidth for communicating information to the processor or controller, it may take several minutes for the controller to receive updated information from a particular sensor. Likewise, much of the information that could be provided by sensors sampling at frequencies ranging between 10-100 Hz, for example, can not be used due to the bandwidth constraints of the serial data bus.